since by so doing you
will be sure to add to the comforts of my life one of the sweetest
that I can enjoy--a token and proof of your affection.

I cannot believe but that I should know you, notwithstanding all that
time may have done: there is not a feature of your face, could I meet
it upon the road, by itself, that I should not instantly recollect.
I should say that is my Cousin's nose, or those are her lips and her
chin, and no woman upon earth can claim them but herself. As for me, I
am a very smart youth of my years; I am not indeed grown grey so much
as I am grown bald. No matter: there was more hair in the world than
ever had the honour to belong to me; accordingly having found just
enough to curl a little at my ears, and to intermix with a little
of my own that still hangs behind, I appear, if you see me in an
afternoon, to have a very decent head-dress, not easily distinguished
from my natural growth, which being worn with a small bag, and a black
riband about my neck, continues to me the charms of my youth, even on
the verge of age. Away with the fear of writing too often!

PS. That the view I give you of myself may be complete, I add the two
following items--That I am in debt to nobody, and that I grow fat.

TO THE SAME

_The kindliness of thanks_

30 _Nov_. 1785.

My dearest cousin,

Your kindness reduces me to a necessity (a pleasant one, indeed), of
writing all my letters in the same terms: always thanks, thanks at
the beginning, and thanks at the end. It is however, I say, a pleasant
employment when those thanks are indeed the language of the heart: and
I can truly add, that there is no person on earth whom I thank with
so much affection as yourself. You insisted that I should give you my
genuine opinion of the wine. By the way, it arrived without the least
damage or fracture, and I finished the first bottle of it this very
day. It is excellent, and though the wine which I had been used to
drink was not bad, far preferable to that. The bottles will be in town
on Saturday. I am enamoured of the desk and its contents before I see
them. They will be most entirely welcome. A few years since I made
Mrs. Unwin a present of a snuff-box--a silver one; the purchase was
made in London by a friend; it is of a size and form that make it
more fit for masculine than feminine use. She therefore with pleasure
accepts the box which you have sent--I should say with the greatest
pleasure. And I, discarding t